In sports - in 30, and in 42 — she won the ultratrail in the Alps: a Ukrainian woman completed 643 km in Switzerland

42-year-old Daria Bodnar started running on peaks and glacial basins only in 30, and now she covers distances whose kilometerage is hard to imagine. Read in the material Short about .

Like five climbs to Everest

First among women and eighth in the overall standings! Our Daria Bodnar showed a decent result at one of Europe’s most difficult ultratrails, SwissPeaks Odyssey. Its route runs through the Swiss canton of Valais: from the shores of Lake Geneva to Alpine glaciers and back. In total 643 kilometers and 43 800 meters of elevation gain.

To understand this figure, we explain: over the entire route, participants cumulatively gain an elevation equivalent to almost five ascents from sea level to the summit of Everest.

Daria’s official result is 166 hours 56 minutes 49 seconds. And cumulatively in the mountains the athlete spent 10 days.

And the journalist Short about asked Daria about… legs.

- A few days after finishing, my legs already hardly remember what they did, – laughs Daria. – Everything’s fine, even not too blistered. I had six pairs of sneakers with me. Two after this distance look very “tired,” but overall all survived.

The entire SwissPeaks Odyssey route, the athlete walked and ran on her own two feet. But 643 kilometers of the trail were split by the organizers into two parts.

- In the first 5 days, participants daily covered a designated distance, finished, slept, and the next morning started again, – Short about Daria Bodnar explains. – And I really “took to” this first part of the race.

According to the trail rules, the start had to be between five and seven in the morning, finish by midnight.

– I was the leader among women, so I usually finished earlier and had more time to recover, – says Daria. – I could eat, get a massage, see a podologist, sleep roughly 8 hours and in the morning start again. I felt I had enough strength reserve, my legs had time to rest. Of course there was fatigue, but roughly like having worked out well in the gym yesterday.

At the “equator” of the route, the organizers even felt a little sorry for the participants and gave only 44 km that day. However, they were very “running” ones. Daria overcame them by midday. Overnight accommodations were provided by the organizers: refuges (mountain huts), hostels, and often in protective structures (bunkers) with two-story beds. But this time she allowed herself a small luxury — she went with friends to a hotel. Because the real race began later.

Sleep not less than two hours

If in the first part the organizers accounted for participants’ time only while moving, now the clock ticked also when they ate, changed shoes, slept. That is, all the time.

It turns out that in ultratrail it’s important not only speed, but also sleep. Imagine, you can lose because you slept too little. And Daria has already tested this on herself.

This almost 400-kilometer distance she covered in 2022-year and 2023-year. Both times she slept too little — and on the third-to-fourth day fell into a kind of “hole”: loss of clarity of thought, strength, and with them speed. She reached the finish, but not with a prize place. Therefore this year she decided to treat sleep almost mathematically.

Sleep consists of cycles, each lasting on average about 1,5 hours. Daria decided to aim for at least one full cycle, adding about 15 minutes to fall asleep. So she allotted no less than two hours for sleep. And the time spent resting she planned to compensate with speed: move faster than rivals and create a reserve in advance.

It worked. The Ukrainian led ahead of other participants. But the fifth night became telling.

– This is already the critical limit of sleep deprivation, – emphasizes Daria Bodnar. – If in the previous days I was ahead of the 2-th place by 9-12 hours, then during this night the girls lost me more than ten hours. And the total time gap with the rival at the finish was already 27 hours! So sleep on such distances is definitely a must.

Medal, bottle of wine and money

Daria was the leader, the team saw the numbers, the gap grew. But she herself long did not allow herself to think about winning.

- The closer the finish, the stronger I pushed away thoughts of victory, – the athlete confesses. – It would be terribly humiliating to loosen up, get injured on the last kilometers and lose everything. And Florence was behind me — a strong and experienced French ultratrailer who had won such distances before. I knew her results and wondered: does she know something I don’t? After the ‘equator’ the realization came that this year I’m faster.

For the win the organizers gifted Daria a medal, a large bottle of wine, and for the first time in her sports life — a cash prize of 600 Swiss francs (about 730 US dollars).

By the way, ultratrail is an expensive hobby.

- The starter fee for SwissPeaks Odyssey is 1600 Swiss francs (about 1940 US dollars), – she notes.

- Sponsors helped pay this fee — the store “Team X” — says Daria. – Full equipment — clothing and footwear — I also received from partners.

But these costs don’t end there.

– I didn’t even count the total sum, – the athlete admits. – There were many different expenses. For example, just to get to the start site you had to drive about 1800 km and the same back. And my support during the race wound up another 1400 km. But I treat it as part of my life. The mountains replace seas for me, picnics replace mountains, many other entertainments also replace mountains. So this is part of my budget.

Two puzzles came together: mountains and running

Daria entered sport at 30 years old. She says she really wanted to hike in the mountains. And she did, but one day she saw an advertisement for a “one hundred miler” — a race about 160 km — and decided to sign up.

– I tried these competitions — and I really liked it, – she recalls. – It’s as if two puzzles aligned: mountains and running. I realized that from then on I want to do this. I ran various distances for seven years, and then realized that only long events truly touch my core, my heart. For the last four years I hardly run distances shorter than 100 km.

Today Daria has 15 successful finishes on distances of 100 miles and more, with more than seven of them — first places. But the athlete emphasizes that preparing for an 600-km distance cannot be done in a few months or even a year. Such tests require years of experience: the body must gradually adapt to ultra-high loads and learn to endure them.

Daria does not hide: in many sports it’s already late to start a serious career in 30. But ultratrail has its own specifics.

– Faster sports are closed to me now, – she says. – I understand that some asphalt marathon I will never run with the results of young athletes. And my sport requires not so much speed as endurance. And endurance grows with years. Anyone can start doing sports in adulthood, you just need to realistically assess yourself and choose the discipline correctly.

And here she immediately warns against another extreme: read such a story and tomorrow sign up for 100 km.

– For example, knees need years of training. It’s impossible to start running and immediately take such distances. I personally train steadily for 12 years, and even after all this on the third day after finishing my knees started to ache terribly. The body still gets enormous loads.

And somewhere in this information the author asked the athlete: why all this? Daria laughed.

– It’s my essence, – she smiles. – If Columbus wanted to lie on the couch, he wouldn’t have discovered America.

And between the mountains — work

And finally a detail that completely destroys the image of a person who supposedly trains all year, drives the Alps, and awaits the next start.

Daria has been working for twenty years as an engineer-designer in the field of ecology and environmental protection. The job is remote. So even the trip to one of the most challenging races of her life looked like this: friends travel through Switzerland, admire the views, and Daria — at the laptop.

– All the time when I’m not running, I work. Even when we were going to the competition, on the highways where traffic is smooth, I pulled out my laptop and worked. I don’t have a separate life as an “athlete” and a separate life as an “ordinary person.” It all fits into one life.

By the way

In the backpack – two kilograms of life

A trail runner’s pack weighs about 2-2,5 kg. Every item there matters. For example, a liter of water in two bottles. Then water can be refilled on the go, in special containers or drinking-water springs.

Also the athlete must have a membrane jacket and pants, because in one day the weather in the mountains can change dramatically. At high altitude, where temperatures are often much lower than in the valleys, even ordinary rain can significantly complicate the stay on the route.

Also in the backpack there’s a minimal first-aid kit, gloves, a buff, sunscreen, poles, a foil emergency blanket, sometimes running “cats” — special spikes for shoes.

And of course a tracker.

- Organizers see minute by minute where you are, – says Daria. – On the tracker or in a special app on the phone there is often an emergency button to call rescuers. I also take about 300 grams of food: five or six sport gels plus something solid to eat. For example, dates or meat chips.

And during SwissPeaks Odyssey Daria also took headphones. Although almost the entire distance they sat in her backpack.

– The mountains are so beautiful and I feel so comfortable in them that I don’t want to listen to music at all. – she says. – But on the last 40 km to the finish I put on headphones and finally played one song — “Endure” by Sergei Nikitin. Its words about how patience polishes you (lines from a famous Vasyl Stus poem. – Ed.) matched my mood that night, and I listened to that song over and over.